Your area representative for the No More Self Hate Campaign, 2006 [entries|friends|calendar] Emily [ userinfo | livejournal userinfo ] [ calendar | livejournal calendar ]

[18 Jul 2006|11:39am] ( 'Who are Hezbollah?' ) Note: if you are interested in learning more about Hezbollah you can look into the history of the Shi'a in Lebanon and especially the Amal Movement (which Hezbollah originally came from). 3| #

[18 Jul 2006|10:48am] In Texas hospitals, some have decided to provide care without checking immigration status while others are demanding immigration papers before providing care. Meanwhile, hospitals that treat illegal immigrants in California are being punished for doing so by not getting reimbursed by the government. (I don't particularly like the way this article is written, but I do think it reflects some of the very concrete problems. I mean, the government punishing hospitals for treating pregnant women without documentation? Come the fuck on.) Meanwhile, the US government is charging to evacuate Americans from Lebanon. Also, "US says war on terror not governed by UN rights treaty". Simultaniously, in an off-record (but still accidentally recorded!) moment, President Bush states that, "...what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and it's over." Fighting in Gaza, Israel, and Lebanon continues. A virtual civil war in Iraq continues. Another car bomb exploded next to a Shi'a shrine yesterday. Two serial killers are striking in an Arizona town. The article took pains to make sure that all the readers knew that one was a large Black man. The rain in Southern California is helping to put out the huge fire raging there. 1| #

[18 Jul 2006|12:07am] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/default.stm http://english.aljazeera.net/ http://www.jpost.com/ This is what is on my mind lately. A few nights ago I woke myself up, grinding my teeth and making groaning noises. In my dream I was trying to recite all the names of the militias in the Lebanese Civil War (I gave my report on it a week ago; strange timing). I've tried a few times to write an entry about what's going in Gaza, Israel, and Lebanon, but I can't seem to get it out right. As for you, I hope you are well. Take care of yourselves, please. -Emily

[02 Jun 2006|08:22pm] Hobespierre is a smeghead!

[27 May 2006|08:07pm] hi emily, While the book was a best-seller, the medical profession rebuked it as quackery and possibly dangerous. When some Dianetics practitioners were arrested for practicing medicine without a license and it appeared that Hubbard himself might be so charged, Hubbard quickly "discovered" Scientology and the CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY was formed, not only to give him a mantle of religious protection for his anti-medical practices, but also to enable him to make more money through a claim of tax exempt status. Hubbard began to sell weekend courses of study and issue degrees, including a "Doctor of Scientology," with the additional claims about the curative powers of his methods. In the meantime, he rebuked all criticism, saying the medical establishment knew he was right and it was fighting to destroy him and to keep control of his empire. 7. Despite his explanations to his loyal following, the disputes and attacks from governments increased. Hubbard was forced to leave the USA to live in the UK. He then tried to live in what was then Rhodesia, until he was kicked out. Threatened with being kicked out of the UK, he took to the sea and sailed the Mediterranean, only to be kicked out of one port after another, from Greece to Portugal. That was how the "Flag Land Base" in Clearwater was established. "Flag" referred to the "flagship" that Hubbard sailed. He had had a miserable Naval career, also being booted out from one command to another. By taking to the sea, he created his own Navy and called it the "Sea Organization" or "Sea Org," outfitting his crews in naval uniforms and operating them in a military fashion. They were given command of the senior organizations and told they were the "elite," and together they could take over the world. But the seagoing "flagship" was insecure. He needed a land base and that was how they secretly moved into Clearwater. "Flag Land Base" was established and became known as the CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY, FLAG SERVICE i will keep you updated as i explore. love you, dad 2| #

[12 May 2006|09:10pm] I spent a week in New York with a certain English boy (my birthday passed - May 5 - with suitable strangeness and cuddling) and then came to California (sans English boy). The last 5 days I was in Mexico with Julie; we just got back to Claremont. I fly home to San Francisco on Monday, and will undoubtedly update/commence reading again then. And then, at the end of May, I'll return to Ohio. It's been swell. I got a tan, by which I mean I am slightly less jaundiced than usual. Hope you're all doing well. Speak soon, and take care. 3| #

[28 Apr 2006|08:53pm] I miss home so badly. I miss Ed. I miss Julie. I even kind of miss Devin, or at least I miss the kind of times we used to have together, the inside jokes and the adventures (that time he and Ed and I all forged through the nasty San Leandro creek, through waist-high sewage and at the end of the day ate plain sandwiches that tasted like the best food on Earth, took in the graffiti under the bridge, made strong drinks that I remember as being flavored with coconut, pineapple, and rum, and we grinned and signed our names: Josephine, Baker, and Schultz. The expedition of. I still think of it, and it is still one of the best days I've ever had). I miss sitting Pring's - remember Pring's? (Chicken wearing spurs, motherfucker!) That place is gone, now - the shittiest/best diner ever, where we drew on stuff and acted up and made Frankenstein dioramas with the creamers but the waitresses were always nice to us. I miss those days on Clement street with Ed when we would plot and dream and write and eye the chess board. The nights in the backyard barbecuing and talking. The days on the porch, drinking and everyone smoking, soaking up the sun. The cats at Ed's house who always know when I'm sad and come to curl up next to me. See, the thing is, Ed and Devin made San Leandro into more than a kind of crappy suburb off Oakland. They made it into a mythological place with sacred ground, some kind of Schulzian world where even the quality of the light meant something. I guess that's what a Beautifier does - they show meaning where you thought there was emptiness. I know memories aren't something a person can go back and live inside, and thank god for that - those were hard times too, awful times. But I want there to be more sunny and beautiful days, I want to go back to my home, the first and deepest place I consider home, and do the things I talked about: interview my family, make all the books and paintings Ed and I plotted out, nights out and days indoors with J., all the things I promised or that were promised to me but never ended up happening for no particular reason. Years are going by and everything is changing. I want to make some record of this thing so precious to me - the early childhood memories of San Francisco's nasty white houses, the school with golf balls stuck in the windows later on with little snotty girls in uniforms, the fog, the lights from that one crest on Diamond Heights looking down into the city, the dark stairway in Molly's house, Ed's bedroom right around 11 AM when it's dark and then you throw open the windows and it gets flooded with lazy light, the heat in Devin's house, still and useless and all the cats sprawled out "like a bomb went off" (he would say), Julie's mom leaned against the sink asking me questions with a familiar smile so different but with the same architecture as her daughter's, the way the streets feel, the Drug Bench that somehow everyone (even tourists) seem to know in Dolores Park, ice cream that has my dad's name, my dad with his mustache and math and pats on the head that are slightly too rough but meant with sweetness, his empty house with the faded tomato-red carpet, my mom's house, the view of the tree branch sloping into our back yard, and how there is nothing so beautiful to me as the sight of the sun setting over Oakland as I ride above everything in a BART car, watching the familiar landscape go by. 8| #

[28 Apr 2006|12:52am] Please don't censor my internets! (Sign the petition.) #

[24 Apr 2006|11:29am] I met today with my advisor (New York advisor) and she told me I'm tentatively getting 12 credits unless my evaluations are awful in which case I'll "get docked a point or something," but it sounds like regardless the fewest I'll get is 10. Yeah, that's right. I'm getting 10-12 credits. Things are looking up! #

[16 Apr 2006|03:30am] Hey. If you've commented on something I wrote recently and I haven't responded, it's not because I don't appreciate it. I do, I really do. I'm just sort of knee deep in both school shit and emotional/psychological shit, which considerably lessens the amount of time I have to respond to comments, even - and especially - ones that are very meaningful to me. So I'll probably leave you a thank you and may not get back to you for some time. But really, thank you. Your thoughts, encouragement, criticisms, and support are deeply appreciated. #

[16 Apr 2006|12:35am] This article sent to me by Andrew in an email entitled, "Laughable socialist hell" but I wasn't finding it so laughable (hoodies CAN CONCEAL YOUR IDENTITY AND THAT IS DANGEROUS, apparently), until I read this comment from "Jay, Cardiff": "This is just another ridiculous move by the legal loons that brings us ever closer to a police state. As mad as it sounds, people actually wear hoodies for other reasons other than to commit crime. They serve as wonderful protection against wind and rain. Will we ban umbrellas next. They do have potential to poke your eye out." #

[14 Apr 2006|03:15pm] I would like to write something about being Arab and calling myself Arab, because I have been thinking about it so much lately and also because it is something I have never so explicitly addressed in a piece of writing. Some of my friends identify me as white and some don’t. I think some are confused about why I insist so vehemently on speaking and writing about being Arab, about asserting my Arab-ness when I clearly receive white privilege due to my appearance. So I want to emphasize first that I do not talk about my Arab-ness in order to somehow excuse or erase the white privilege I receive; in fact, I think that as someone who is identified by dominant culture as white, it’s essential that I acknowledge and critically examine my white privilege. However, I do identify as Arab, and I have felt that otherness inside of me all my life. “Passing under the radar” (so to speak) is not the same as having a sense of belonging, and – in times when I was ashamed of being Lebanese – I was always frightened that at any moment I would be revealed as a fraud, a “foreigner,” one of those others. ( 3 pages of history and thoughts ) 10| #

[11 Apr 2006|12:54am] "Cracker" =/= any other racial slur. Why? Find out here, on the 1 AM news. #

[06 Apr 2006|09:05pm] 'Both Naomi Wolf and Pierre Bordieu come the conclusion that insidious "body codes" paralyze Western women's abilities to compete for power, even though access to education and professional opportunities seem wide open, because the rules of the game are so different according to gender. Women enter power games with so much of their energy deflected to their physical appearance that one hesitates to say that the playing field is level. "A cultural fixation on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty," explains Wolf. It is "an obsession about female obedience. Dieting is the most potent political sedative in women's history; a quietly mad population is a tractable one." Research, she contends, "confirmed what most women know too well—that concern with weight leads to a 'virtual collapse of self-esteem and sense of effectiveness' and that . . . 'prolonged and periodic caloric restriction' resulted in a distinctive personality whose traits are passivity, anxiety, and emotionality." Similarly, Bourdieu, who focuses more on how this myth hammers its inscriptions onto the flesh itself, recognizes that constantly reminding women of their physical appearances destabilizes them emotionally because it reduces them to exhibited objects. "By confining women to the status of symbolical objects to be seen and perceives by the other, masculine domination . . . puts women in a state of constant physical insecurity. . . . They have to strive ceaselessly to be engaging, attractive, and available." Being frozen into the passive position of an object whose very existence depends on the eyes of its beholder turns the educated modern Western women into a harem slave.' (Fatima Mernissi) 3| #

[29 Mar 2006|01:55am] Also, if you're against the bill to make border crossing a felony (I am), you can send an email to your senator here. #

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